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The arrival of a new year is always a time of reflection and vision. Reflection on where we’ve been, what we’ve accomplished, personal growth and family development over the preceding year. A time to look forward, make plans and renew our dreams and vision for the twelve months stretching out before us like a clean blackboard on the first day of school.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. They seem an exercise in futility to me, but I do make New Year Wishes and spend some time renewing the focus of our family, defining our dreams and laying out the path we hope to take in big, general, terms in the coming year.

Here are a few ideas that I’ve found helpful this year, and links to a few folks you might want to meet.

1. Choose a word to meditate on

I’ve often reduced a New Year’s Wish to a few words that I’ve repeated to myself throughout the year to keep my focus, remind me of my goals and to help me move forward in the direction I wish to go. Last year’s words were:  Live With Presence, Purpose & Joy. The year before that: Love, Peace, Renewal.

My friend Kiran Bradley posted something recently that challenged me to distill it further, to get it down to just one word for the year. I’m not sure I can do it, but I’m going to try. It needs to be a word that will affect all areas of life, or reflect desired growth, or otherwise move us forward. A word we can meditate on daily.

Her word for the year?

Altruism.

That’s a really good word. There are so many ways that could affect daily life, the lives of my family members, friends, strangers, the world, in a positive manner. So many ways it could change me, change us. I’m tempted to steal it, but I won’t. I’ll come up with my own word.

What’s your word?

2. A Theme For Your Year

 Maybe one word for the year is too narrow. Maybe you need something a little bigger. Maybe your year needs a theme. An over-arching subject to help you unlock your potential. Something bigger than yourself to work towards and work at each day. Or maybe something small, and personal, and completely internal that you keep chunking away at a little at a time.

In 2007 our theme was Launching The Edventure Project. We worked every day towards the goal of cutting loose the bowline on life and starting our open-ended world tour. It was a really fun theme for the year. This year my theme is much smaller, it’s centered on working on incorporating The Four Agreements into my mind on a daily basis. It matters to no one but me, but it still matters.

What could your theme be this year; personally, or for your family?

3. A Vision Chart

 I’ve seen lots of versions of this project, personally, for families, for corporations. The basic idea is the same: Create a chart that is full of your vision, or your dreams, for the year.

This is a really fun one to do as a family. Everyone chooses a few things that they’d really like to do, see, become, learn, or accomplish in the coming year and you create a poster out of it. Perhaps you cut pictures out of magazines or print them off of the internet. Perhaps you draw your pictures, or you write big, bold words. Perhaps you use art, or music, or poetry to represent your vision. The possibilities are endless!

When you’re done, you have a wonderful graphic interpretation of your vision, something to look at every day and keep you focused.

Encourage a combination of big, grandiose, “crazy” dreams as well as small, personal, intangible dreams and everything in between. Don’t allow anyone to belittle anyone else’s vision. Don’t ever say, “We can’t do that,” or, “That’s impossible!” The point is to dream big dreams together, imagine the possibilities, become energized by life and for life. The sky’s the limit!

What’s going on your dream chart?

4. Things You can do without

 I found this a fascinating thought.

My friend Melissa Banigan brought it to my attention through her New Year’s post on her blog. She didn’t make resolutions this year, instead, she and a few friends wrote down on slips of paper things they could do without this year, things they intended to do without, and then tossed them into a fire together.

How refreshing is that?

Instead of trying to change things, trying to recreate yourself, trying to cram more, better, faster, skinnier, more productive things into your already bursting at the seams life, why not let some things go?

Why not create some space in your life and mind?

Why not weed the garden and then see what lovely things plant themselves in the fertile ground of you?

Things I can do without this year:

• Guilt
• Drama
• Expectations

5. Create Your Own 12 Step

I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have a big dream, or a big goal. Some people wear them on their sleeves. Other people hide them quietly in the back of their hearts, under a pile of old books. Everyone has one.

So why don’t more people achieve them? Why don’t more people live their dreams or reach their goals consistently?

Lots of reasons:

• Life overwhelms us
• The devil is in the details
• Time & Money concerns
• Lack of focus

What I love about Justin Mussler and his family is that they have a big dream, a huge, overwhelming goal, they wear it on their sleeves and their working it out in front of the whole world. That takes a lot of guts! What if they fail and everyone sees? They won’t. Justin has made this coming year in to a 12 step program for reaching their goal. Well, a 52 step program actually, one step per week.

Couldn’t you do the same thing? Take your big dream and break it down, month by month, week by week and cut that massive, hard to swallow elephant into bite sized pieces! It’s the way any overwhelming task gets accomplished.

Where would you be in 1 year with focus?

• Out of debt?
• Living in a foreign country?
• Traveling for a living?
• In a new career?
• Speaking a new language?
• Adopting kids?
• Changing the world through volunteer work?

Why can’t you be there? Why CAN’T 2012 be your year? Your kids’ year? Your family’s year?

The answer: It can be.

What will YOU do in 2012?

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This time of year there is a lot of talk about gifts, what we’re giving, what we hope to receive. Much of the giving centers around children and creating a magical holiday for them.

Within the circles we run in there is also a lot of discussion about how much is too much, minimizing the materialistic, consumerist driven aspects of the holidays and focusing instead on the intangibles, the things that really matter. It’s got me thinking about the gifts that we give, as parents, to our children, not at holidays, but everyday, over the long haul of a childhood. The gifts that affect who they ultimately become. The gifts that were given to me and how to intentionally craft those into the next generation.

I’ve given it a lot of thought and there are many really important gifts to give our kids, but I keep coming back around to one: Self-Sufficiency. Maybe you’d argue that there’s another, more important gift to give, and that’s okay, because there are certainly many that are indispensable. It’s not like we can give only one gift to our kids, we give hundreds of them, every day. But for me, Self-Sufficiency is the best gift my parents gave me, and the one I’m most determined to pass on. Let me tell you why. (more…)

Sometimes, the most fabulous things that happen in life, in a family, happen beneath the surface. They aren’t loud, or showy or obvious in any way; and yet, they’re earth shaking.

Justin & Heidi Mussler and their kids eagerly hosted us for a lovely day in Jamaica Plain a couple of weeks ago. They took us to a street festival and we marched in a parade. It was perfect in every way, even the spring downpour that sent us all running for their house and a board game and to sample the chocolate they’d made after watching our chocolate podcast.

On the outside, they look like the average family, two kids, two parents with two jobs and a delightfully funky flat in a charming section of Boston.

But on the inside? There’s a revolution going on. They’re the force behind The Great Family Escape and they’re quietly revolutionizing their world. (more…)

A friend introduced me to Stephanie, in the virtual world, some time ago. I instantly loved her heart as a Mom, her zest for life and her passion to make the world a better place through the influence of her little family.

Then, when I found out what their “next big thing” was, we became instant friends.

Imagine renting your house, walking away from everything you’ve known to live in a camper and travel the continental USA for a year… with two toddlers, and a mission!

Tim & Stephanie Shaeffer and their girls, aged two and four, are the one family dynamo known as “Give Every Day” and they’re on a mission to do just that as they move across the country. (more…)

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Some of us parents dream of our children achieving great things:

“That’s my daughter on stage! See my son down there in the championship game?”

Maybe we picture our kids in exciting careers and happy families when we dream of the future. Who wouldn’t want their children to be well-rounded and excellent at what matters to them?

As wonderful as specific achievements can be there is yet something far better. What could that be?

It is the internalized habits that lead to success and the confident expectation that excellence is attainable. (more…)